The Unhaunting

In this short, sharp, Southern Gothic horror novel, home takes on a whole new meaning. From Micaiah Johnson, the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Space Between Worlds. 'You've never seen a haunted house like this one before' KYLIE LEE BAKER
'Original, imaginative, and terrifying' P. DJÈLÍ CLARK
'Charts the liminal middle ground between Shirley Jackson and Toni Morrison' CLAY McLEOD CHAPMAN
'Ferocious and poetic' VERONICA ROTH
'Ingenious... anxiety-inducing from start to twisty end' VICTOR MANIBO At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up. When Shantell's best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she's too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits. But not only is the house in better shape than they'd expected, it makes them better too: Shantell's anxiety stops flaring up; terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions; and Tobias, Avery's older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking. There's an eeriness to the calm, and it's almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. As they dig into the house's history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there's only one thing worse than a house that's haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.

Micaiah Johnson is a Carl Brandon and Compton Crook Award-winning author. Her debut novel, The Space Between Worlds, was a Sunday Times Bestseller, a Locus Award finalist, an Editors' Choice at The New York Times and was named one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, was released in March 2024 and has been named as a Best Books of 2024 by NPR, Reactor, Esquire and Lithub. She received her BA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and her MFA in fiction from Rutgers University-Camden, and her PhD from Vanderbilt University.